Archer caught me up and shoved the chair back under me, squeezing my shoulder.
Ryan dunked a clean napkin into ice water and Archer draped it over the back of my neck. The cold shocked a little more sense into me and I placed my palms on the table.
It wasn’t Jamie. It wasn’t.
“That’s him,” I said. “The guy who attacked me.”
The blank eyes and bloodless face stared up at me. A few claw marks rent his neck and cheek, crusty with blood, but the blue, milky tint to the bloodshot eyes meant he was dead. Very clearly dead. His lips peeled back in a silent snarl, the teeth yellow and broken and flecked with blood.
I exhaled in relief. At least I didn’t have to worry about being attacked again. By a wild man, anyway.
Archer kept his arm on the back of my chair, holding the cool napkin against my skin, and frowned at the photograph. “Where did you find him?”
Lars kept recording and the detectives kept frowning, addressing me and no one else. “About a mile from where we found the last bits of your pack. Collapsed near a trail that led to a fresh spring.”
“What — what killed him?” I asked. Part of me didn’t want to know so I could imagine the bastard dying in a really painful, awful way. He’d almost killed me — and would have succeeded if Dragomir hadn’t been there to pump me full of magic blood.
“Looks like a wild animal attack,” Hightower said. He pulled a few other photos from the folder and placed them image-down on the table. “They’re pretty gory, Ada. I know you’re used to dissecting brains, but these are graphic. Don’t look unless you really want to know.”
I debated ignoring the photos or handing them back. There were plenty of things that haunted me already; I didn’t need gross corpse photos on the list as well. I couldn’t even handle the cut in Isidro’s leg. What was I doing even thinking about looking at the rest of the wild man? I definitely did not like goopy gross stuff like went on inside bodies. Dissecting a frog in class was about as close as I’d come to guts and gore.
Giselle reached out before I could decide and flipped the photos over so Lars could zoom in. Hightower caught her arm and pulled her away with a sharp, “Stay back, ma’am.”
My eyes wouldn’t leave the photos to see how Giselle responded to being told what to do.
The wild man had been torn apart. His throat gaped in a disgusting parody of a smile under his jaw, and his insides had turned to mostly outsides. One of his arms wasn’t even in the photo. My stomach turned over but I couldn’t look away. “Was it a bear? That looks like — a bear. Maybe two or three.”
“Prints were too small around it,” Schultz said. “The rangers said it looked more like wolves, but the kill is too — frenzied. Something else may have gotten him and the wolves showed up to chase it off. It didn’t look like they ate much of him, though. Maybe he tasted as bad as he smelled. There wasn’t much blood where we found him, so it could have happened somewhere else and he got dragged. We’re still investigating who he is and where he came from, but at least he’s not roaming loose.”
I nodded, struggling to articulate my thoughts as relief drifted over me. “Yeah. At least he won’t hurt anyone else.”
“We’re matching the DNA from your clothes and under your nails to make sure this is the right guy, but we won’t get the results back for a couple of weeks.” Hightower picked up the photos to hide the grisly scene. “Thought you’d be able to ID him sooner. We’ll let you know one way or the other.”
“It’s definitely him,” I said. “Most of him, I guess.”
Schultz smiled and nodded to me. “Enjoy the rest of your dinner. If you can.”
Hightower winked at me before the detectives retreated to the bar to talk to the owner. I exhaled and leaned back in my chair, unconsciously taking comfort in Archer’s presence. He drove away the chills running down my back from seeing the wild man again. He didn’t move his arm. The casual half-embrace sent my thoughts whirling, and I wondered whether his crew noticed. Whether it was normal for him to treat a show’s subject like he treated me.
Not that I believed they meant to make a show. They came to Chilhowee for some other reason, and used the documentary as an excuse, a cover. The only question was, what were they actually up to?